NBE3U Unit 2: Behind the Image

Students ask who does the looking: E. Pauline Johnson's 1892 critique of the “Indian girl” of settler fiction beside her own story “A Red Girl's Reasoning,” Duncan Campbell Scott's “vanishing” poem, staged and retouched photographs, team names, Hollywood westerns and Reel Injun, an old-style textbook paragraph and two versions of one news story. They write a critical analysis and edit it for precision. Teacher notes recommend reviewing the course with your board's Indigenous education lead and inviting Elders, Knowledge Keepers or Métis Senators through board protocol, and include support resources wherever residential schools and loss come up. Contemporary texts are chosen by the teacher from board-approved resources (titles only); public domain writing by Indigenous authors of the past is included in full as historical context.

Assessment of learning: a representation analysis essay and a “deconstruct and reconstruct” media presentation, with rubrics.

This unit is free to download and use with your classes.

Lessons

1. Who Does the Looking?
2. The Indian Girl in Fiction
3. The Vanishing Myth
4. Posed and Retouched
5. Who Owns a Name?
6. Reel Injun
7. In the Textbook
8. In the News
9. Contradictions
10. Whose Story?
11. Building the Analysis
12. Editing for Precision
13. Deconstruct and Reconstruct

What you get

• A teacher lesson plan for every lesson: curriculum expectations, learning goals and success criteria, a timed sequence, differentiation, look-fors and answer guides
• Detailed slideshows (15 to 18 slides per lesson) with speaker notes on every slide: what to say, what to ask, what to look for and how long to spend, plus model answers and answer-key slides
• Student handouts, organizers and exit tickets
• Editable Word and PowerPoint files, plus PDFs
• A unit overview and the summative tasks and rubrics

Part of the free complete NBE3U course.